This invention relates to a conveyor belt, especially for use in below-ground mining and tunnel construction, that has decentralized drive units which are arranged in the carrying frame supporting the roller blocks in a manner distributed along the longitudinal extend, and a T-shaped guide bar provided on the underside of the belt, in which the drive rollers of the drive units engage bilaterally, said drive rollers being capable of being swung against each other via a clamping device, thus pushing the belt in a designated direction, as well as a belt revealing belt inserts.
Such rubber belt conveyors are used above all in below-ground mining and tunnel construction for bulk goods transport. The belt, consisting of rubber, is guided in roller blocks that are braced upon a carrying frame. From DE-OS [German Patent Application Laid Open to Inspection] 15 56 544 we know conveyors that reveal a guide bar on the underside of the rubber belt. This guide bar is engaged by guide rollers that are intended to make sure that the conveyor belt will run straight. Inserted into the guide bar are textile reinforcing inserts or coatings or also a through-going wire cable so that one can create a quite stable bar. The disadvantage here is that such a conveyor belt cannot be laid in a curve as a curve conveyor belt because the necessary drive and reversing rollers are still installed at both ends of the conveyor and those rollers would create the so-called rubber band or flip-arc effect if the conveyor belt were to be guided along a curve. DE-OS 32 29 061, in addition to the guides provided at an interval, also discloses the distributed arrangement of drives. These drives have drive rollers that engage the guide bar so that such a conveyor belt can be laid along a curve or in a curve. DE-OS 33 38 425 and DE-OS 37 41 054 show curve conveyor belts with a guide bar in the form of a molded rubber locking bolt, similar to a double T-beam which is glued on or on-vulcanized to the belt band cover with its upper lateral piece and in whose bar the friction wheels can engage. The lower flange is intended additionally to prevent the guide bar from being ripped out as the belt runs through troughs and saddles or to make this effect more difficult. Also in these known conveyor belts, the guide bar continues to be a problem because it is compressed again and again, especially when the conveyor belt is loaded, as it runs over the garland box. This kind of rolling effect also appears particularly at the turn-around points. Another disadvantage is represented by the fact that, depending on the curvature radius and the length of the belt, one can encounter problems as one runs along curves because either the pressing-on forces of the drive rollers are too great, so that we get the rolling effect also at the reversing rollers and at the roller blocks, or that the guide bar, in spite of its T-shaped design and the lower flange, can be pulled out of the guide, so that the belt then runs out of the anticipated guide. Finally, there is yet another disadvantage in that--in order to make the carrying frame and the individual subunit also in an articulated fashion--one must, at the connecting points, make a corresponding effort in the form of longitudinal holes, guides, and the like.